Open Office developer contest

Just saw this:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Developer_Article_Contest

I've been thinking of switching over to the Dark Side myself. Not Perl, Microsoft.

I often use Microsoft Office at work, and my previous post touches on something I've wanted to do frequently, namely, get data in a more manageable format. Who doesn't? And not just PDF Bug reports.

What could be more fun than taking a requirements document (probaboly output from Rational Requisite Pro in the distant past) and turning it into a table in a database that can be cross-referenced with my (possibly Microsoft Excel - based) test conditions.

I could think of a couple things worse (Mercury Test Director, I'm looking at you.)

Okay, maybe my life isn't exciting enough. After 6 months travelling the globe (to Fiji & Ecuador) I get back to work and in only a month, my fondest desire is to convert Word documents and Excel spreadsheets into usable data.

If I can solve that problem, maybe it'll get me back to the southern hemisphere permanently.

A satellite connection and a rugged laptop and a sailing catamaran and a telecommute contract are my wildest dream, but usable information is a close second... or maybe distant third.

So I've been toying with the idea of learning C#. Or VB.NET. I've been looking at what makes SAMIE and PAMIE tick, and I recently discover JACOB and Jiffie, and have been meaning to look at Watir.

Note: Is there a similar PHP framework using COM? How stable is PHP with COM?

But what about Open Office? Well, nobody uses it at work. At least not yet. I'm guessing the developer contest is hoping to help change that.

I'd like to too.

And $750 is half a month's payment on a yacht.